The True Cost of Housing: Why Mobility Justice Matters for Affordability

In March 2026, Just Streets, Housing Europe, and the European Cyclists’ Federation hosted a webinar exploring the links between housing affordability and mobility justice Bringing together policymakers, researchers, and practitioners from across Europe, the discussion examined how housing and transport decisions shape the true cost of living in cities - and what it will take to make affordable, well-connected neighbourhoods a reality.

Watch the webinar replay and explore the key takeaways below.

Speakers

Matthew Baldwin
Head of the Housing Task Force, European Commission
Eamon Ryan
European Commission Housing Advisory Board
Sorcha Edwards
Housing Europe
Enrica Papa
University of Westminster
Michael Johansson
Lund University
Gerhard Schuster
Aspern Seestadt powered by Wien 3420 AG
Susanne Elfferding
Ministry of Transport & Mobility Transition, Hamburg
Philip Amaral
European Cyclists' Federation

Takeaways: Housing Costs & Car-Oriented Parking Bylaws

  • Parking requirements are quietly embedded in building codes, increasing housing costs and shaping how people move. For many low- and middle-income households, mobility functions as a second hidden rent.

  • A typical parking space has a physical footprint of 12 m², but a real footprint of 20–30 m² once circulation is included. At this scale, parking displaces green infrastructure, stormwater infiltration, and biodiversity.

  • Costs are embedded in rents and purchase prices, with parking adding up to 25% to housing unit costs. At €40,000 per space, a 100-unit social housing project with one mandatory space per unit can see rents rise by up to €180 per month per unit over 30 years.

  • Parking costs bundled into rents mean car-free households subsidise car owners. In cities like Brussels, fewer than 50% of residents own or have access to a car - making the allocation of scarce public space to private vehicles a question of justice, not planning convention.

  • Aspern - housing around 25,000 residents in northeast Vienna - has reached just 240 cars per 1,000 residents through public transport access, a 15-minute city concept, mixed-use density, a mobility fund for shared bikes and cars, and above-ground collective garages replacing expensive basement parking.

  • Hamburg combined low-car development along the former Elbe port area with public communication tools - including a transport cost calculator showing break-even points with car ownership surprisingly close to the city centre - to deliver a measurable modal shift.

  • This figure, reported by Swedish public housing providers to Housing Europe, illustrates the scale of what is at stake. In Flanders, social housing providers can only access funding for parking construction - not sustainable mobility - a barrier a simple regulatory change could remove.

  • The European Investment Bank already applies climate conditionality to lending. Vienna requires housing subsidy applicants to demonstrate a "future-fit" mobility concept. Applying similar conditions across EU housing investment could make car-light housing the default choice for developers.

  • Austria's critical mass of limited-profit housing saves Austrians €1.3 billion per year in housing costs. Integrated plans that reduce parking requirements can cut construction costs, lower tenant expenses, and free up urban land.

Takeaways: Mobility Justice & The Right to the City

  • In many European cities, 50–70% of street space is allocated to moving and storing private cars. Street design determines who gets space, distributes environmental harms - pollution, noise, road danger - disproportionately to residents along busy corridors, and shapes whether children can walk to school or residents can cycle to nearby services.

  • Mobility justice asks who benefits from the mobility system and who bears its costs. Some groups experience easy, affordable mobility while others face long travel times, high costs, and exposure to danger and pollution. Improving accessibility is a political and distributive question about how cities allocate mobility resources and risk.

  • The Just Streets project identified four interlinked dimensions through interviews and workshops across European cities: distributive justice (how space is allocated); procedural justice (who participates in decisions); recognition justice (whose needs are considered, including children and disabled groups); and epistemic justice (whose knowledge counts, including lived experience).

  • Housing affordability is typically assessed through rent or construction costs, detached from the urban environment. But housing location shapes access to employment, services, and transport. Housing that appears affordable in price can become expensive in practice - a "spatial affordability paradox" - as transport is already the second-largest household expenditure after housing.

  • When housing is built in areas with limited public transport, poor cycling infrastructure, and few nearby services, car ownership is a structural necessity. Reducing car dependency requires integrating land use and transport planning, with reliable public transport, safe cycling networks, and proximity to everyday services.

  • Housing Europe found cases - particularly in countries with smaller social housing sectors - where residents have no car but also no public transport, because housing was built without sustainable mobility options. Finance is sometimes channelled into mandatory parking spaces left empty in those same developments.

  • When people with disabilities, elderly people, or children cannot safely walk streets, they withdraw from public life - and their needs disappear from the data that shapes policy. Designing for those with the greatest accessibility needs produces better streets for everyone.

  • A Delft University study identified the external costs of transport in Europe at over €1 trillion in 2016, with more than half attributable to private cars - costs not borne by those generating them. Fewer than 50% of Brussels residents own or have access to a car, yet public street space is allocated overwhelmingly to private vehicles.

  • Multiple speakers converged on this recommendation. Cities should move from minimum to maximum parking limits based on access to alternative modes - as London has done. The EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive now requires two bike parking spots per unit where more than three car spaces are provided, pending member state implementation.

  • The EU Affordable Housing Plan (December 2025) references parking costs in apartments as a reform area; an EU Affordable Housing Act is expected in 2026. The Social Climate Fund's housing and mobility strands currently operate separately - linking them could enable more integrated projects.